Ghost Town

Kayaköy, Turkey, Oct 2005: This was my second visit to Kayaköy, the ghost town near Fetiye in South Western Turkey. Kayaköy consists of hundreds of rundown but still mostly intact Greek-style houses and churches, which orignally hosted a population of approximately 2000 people. Built on the ancient Greek village of Carmylessus, it existed up until the population exchanges of 1922/3. Anatolian Greeks had lived here since antiquity. After the invading Greek’s defeat to Turkey in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), Greece had no choice but to sign the demands of the victorious Turks in Lausanne, Switzerland. More than 1.5 million Asia Minor Greeks were forced out of Turkey, and at least half a million Turkish muslims from Greece.